Eminem Had To Relearn How To Rap

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Relapse and Recovery weren’t just clever metaphors that [lastfm]Eminem[/lastfm] used as album titles. The biggest rapper ever from Detroit – and one of the biggest of all time, now – went to hell and back battling substance and drug abuse. When he returned from all of that, though, he found himself clean, sober … and without his hip-hop skills.

“It was like I was a kid again,” he said. “Not to sound corny, I felt like I was born again. I had to learn my writing skills. I was relearning how to rap. I didn’t know if my emcee skills were intact.”

While most would definitely say that those skill re-appeared by the time Recovery hit the streets – and certainly before the emcee hit the stage with [lastfm]Jay-Z[/lastfm] for the “Home and Home” concert series – there was definitely a time in between the end of rehab and the albums where it was an open question: Could [lastfm]Eminem[/lastfm] return to the form he had when he was rhyming about Slim Shady and Stan?

“Rapping wasn’t like riding a bike,” he said. “It was as much physical as mental. I was relearning basic motor skills. I couldn’t control my hand shakes. I’d get in the recording booth and tried to rap, and none of it was clever and I wasn’t saying it right.”